"Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her sonâs bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, whoâd moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, âI thought Iâd bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.â

In the Franklin Reserve neighborhood of Elk Grove, California, south of Sacramento, the houses are nicer than those at Windy Ridgeâmany once sold for well over $500,000âbut the phenomenon is the same. At the height of the boom, 10,000 new homes were built there in just four years. Now many are empty; renters of dubious character occupy others. Graffiti, broken windows, and other markers of decay have multiplied. Susan McDonald, president of the local residentsâ association and an executive at a local bank, told the Associated Press, âThereâs been gang activity. Things have really been changing, the last few years.â

So a McMansion is like a mansion only in a tract-home subdivision spaced about 11-feet apart? Something like 3200ft+?

Some of us bought them surrounded by acres and acres of land and these mostly retained their value. My home recently appraised at 120% of its 2006 sale value, not exactly abject depreciation. It might even appreciate in the future if there is a future under the communists currently running the county.

So speak for yourselves. If you lost money on a house you chose that house poorly. Some of us are doing quite well, thank you.

So a McMansion is like a mansion only in a tract-home subdivision spaced about 11-feet apart? Something like 3200ft+?

Some of us bought them surrounded by acres and acres of land and these mostly retained their value. My home recently appraised at 120% of its 2006 sale value, not exactly abject depreciation. It might even appreciate in the future if there is a future under the communists currently running the county.

So speak for yourselves. If you lost money on a house you chose that house poorly. Some of us are doing quite well, thank you.

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If it weren't for those "communists" running the country and taking over Fannie and Freddie and the entire housing financial system, your house's value would have dropped at least over 50%.

Homeowners are beneficiaries of Obama's policies - I'm not saying I support all of Obama's policies - I just get annoyed at hypocrisy and ignorance.

Well, to be fair, the homebuying/land market has been socialized since forever.
Hoover started up the FHLB - Federal Home Loan Board - in response to the first spasms of the Great Depression.
FDR started up first the FHA, and then Fannie.
Once the income tax got rolling after WWII, we had the mortgage interest and property tax deductions. The latter wasn't really a subsidy until the deductions for sales and gas taxes were eliminated in the eighties, leaving only the property tax to be deducted. At that point, it became a blatant subsidy to homeownership.
LBJ introduced Freddie to provide some competition to Fannie.
More recently, just to put the icing on this towering cake, they exempted cap gains taxes on the sale of your principal home, provided you bought another one within some set period of time.

The recently demised bubble was the product of two things:

1 - All this legislation underpinning home prices, which directed - misdirected, rather - massive amounts of capital into the mortgage market.
2 - The Japanese and later the Chinese providing massive amounts of credit because of their mercantilist currency policies.

Neither of these have been fixed. You hear a lot of noise about the latter, but about the socialization of the housing market, all you get is a lot of noise about doing away with Fannie and Freddie from the Reps. The FHA, FHLB, the tax deductions, the cap gains exclusion? Nothing. It'll snow in San Juan in July before anyone even peeps about eliminating any of that.